In the field of communications network provisioning, Network Management Systems (NMS), such as Alcatel 5620 NMS, model the operation of managed communications network entities constituent of a managed communications network infrastructure based on event notifications issued the managed communications network entities.
In accordance with modeled managed communication network entity operations management, designing, testing, validating and maintaining managed communications network entity models is time-consuming particularly when considering that the managed communications network entities (hardware switching nodes, aggregation nodes, deaggregation node, rack, interface card, statistics collector, router, bridge, etc. and software virtual router managed entities) have multiple types and versions thereof and are developed and updated by multiple vendors in accordance with a variety of schedules none of which are under the control of service providers.
While the modeling of managed communications network entities is of a tremendous help when models are available and up to date, performing operations management in accordance with this paradigm hinders communications network management operations when models are not available or out of date. Probably the worst possible situation, encountered in the competitive communications service provisioning environment, is making a decision not to upgrade a managed communications network entity, as a corresponding NMS model upgrade is not available, because the managed communications network entity would be rendered unmanageable.
A large proportion of network management operations and related actions depend on current configuration, diagnostic, and statistic information being available. The requirement of having an updated managed communications network entity model for retrieving current configuration, diagnostic, and statistic information is seen as a stringent requirement “and a tall order.”
In interacting with managed entity models to effect operations management in the NMS context, ultimately the NMS system issues Command Line Interface (CLI) commands to target managed communications network entities. Another way to effect operations management is for service provider operations management personnel, interacting with the NMS, to issue CLI commands and/or employ CLI command scripts for execution directly to target managed communications network entities on an as-needed basis. While CLI-based operations management may augment model-based operations management in a network management context, employing CLI-based operations management provides a level of flexibility while suffering from: a high learning curve associated with attaining proficiency in CLI-based operations management, a high overhead associated with sustaining proficiency in CLI-based operations management, an exposure to human error in entering CLI commands, an operational overhead incurred from time consuming CLI command entry, etc. Some of these issues are made worse by the fact that CLI command sets are specific to equipment manufacturers, equipment types, equipment versions, etc. Therefore, CLI commands are managed-entity-specific, which makes supporting many types of managed entity difficult for operations management personnel because of the number and size of the CLI command sets that must be mastered.
The known patent prior art describes systems and methods having CLI-based functionality addressing differences in managed-entity-specific CLI command sets attempting to reduce the need for operations management personnel to master all CLI command sets.
A prior art U.S. patent application publication No. 2003/0135508 entitled “Translating Configuration Files Among Network Devices” published on Jul. 17th, 2003 by Chorafakis et al. describes translating CLI scripts written in one CLI command set to an equivalent script written in another CLI command set.
A prior art U.S. patent application publication No. 2003/0126195 entitled “Common Command Interface” published on Jul. 3rd, 2003 by Reynolds et al. describes an interface abstraction for allowing network devices to maintain one set of code for each command regardless of the command interface (e.g. web, CLI, NMS, etc.) The interface is expanded to a community command interface for connecting to multiple network devices.
A prior art U.S. Pat. No. 6,493,719 entitled “Method and System for Scripting System Management Information” which issued on Dec. 10th, 2002 to Booth et al., describes the transformation of scripts to low-level syntax, use of monikers to simplify strings in scripts, and script collections to enable a set of objects to be serviced iteratively, for example, regular retrieval of resource properties.
While the above mentioned attempts alleviate the above mentioned issues to some extent, human involvement remains necessary therefore an exposure to human error still remains.
Further prior art addresses automated operations management issues associated with CLI-based operations management using CLI scripts:
A prior art U.S. patent application publication No. 2002/0169776 entitled “Network Architecture and Methods for Service Script Execution and Management” published on Nov. 14th, 2002 by Tuunanen et al., describes “arming” scripts prior to execution according to specific conditions provided by user profile data or a secondary database, and executing the script upon the occurrence of an event.
A prior art U.S. Pat. No. 5,978,594 entitled “System for Managing Computer Resources Across a Distributed Computing Environment by First Reading Discovery Information About how to Determine System Resources Presence” which issued on Nov. 2, 1999 to Bonnell et al., describes interpretable scripts that are automatically executed upon the occurrence of events (e.g. alarm conditions).
While the above two mentioned attempts reduce lengthy manual entry of, and interaction with, CLI scripts to some extent, the automation leaves managed entities exposed to being overloaded with a large number of CLI command scripts which if executed would negatively affect the performance and operation of the managed entities.
There therefore is a need to solve the above mentioned issues.